.. < chapter xlix 15  THE HYENA >

     There are certain queer times and occasions
in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe

     for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns,
and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing.  He bolts
down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things
visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent
digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints.  And as for small difficulties
and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all
these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly
punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.  That
odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time
of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so
that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now
seems but a part of the general
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joke.  There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy
sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole
voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.  Queequeg, said
I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and I was still
shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water; Queequeg, my fine
friend, does this sort of thing often happen?  Without much emotion, though
soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand that such things did
often happen.  Mr. Stubb, said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up
in his oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; Mr. Stubb,
I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief
mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent.  I suppose then,
that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the
height of a whaleman's discretion?  Certain.  I've lowered for whales from a
leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn.  Mr. Flask, said I, turning to
little King-Post, who was standing close by; you are experienced in these
things, and I am not.  Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in
this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself
back-foremost into death's jaws?  Can't you twist that smaller?  said Flask.

     Yes, that's the law.  I should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a
whale face foremost.  Ha, ha!  the whale would give them squint for squint,
mind that!  here then, from three impartial witnesses, i had a deliberate
statement of the entire case.  Considering, therefore, that squalls and
capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters
of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the
superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life
into the hands of him who steered the boat --oftentimes a fellow who at that
very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft
with his own frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster to
our own particular boat was chiefly to be
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imputed to Starbuck's driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall,

     and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great
heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly
prudent Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a devil's chase I was
implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I say, I
thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will.

     Queequeg, said I, come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and
legatee.  It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at
their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more
fond of that diversion.  This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I
had done the same thing.  After the ceremony was concluded upon the present
occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart.
Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that
Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many
months or weeks as the case might be.  I survived myself; my death and burial
were locked up in my chest.  I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly,
like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug
family vault.  now then, thought i, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of
my frock, here goes a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the
devil fetch the hindmost.
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